BecomingPlant

This five-minute video is an excerpt of a seven-hour endurance performance transfigured into a time-based, conceptual sound-video presentation. The complete video reflects the performance in real time, from 1-8 pm on September 16, 2009. The clip on view here occurs at hour 3, minutes 17-22. While it may appear to be the case, the video is not time-lapsed; the play of light has to do with nothing other than the movement of sun and wind, completely on their own time, coming in contact with earthly existence. The video's soundscape consists of field recordings taken by the artist as well as real-time recordings of the artist's labor in creating this piece.

Did you know that the mass ratio of plant-to-animal-life
is
1000-to-1
?

Perhaps we should take the plant’s perspective more seriously?

Of course, why bother when there is so much to do? And why would we want to, when after all, we’ve got our animal advantage: we can move.

Away From Trouble.
Or Toward What We Desire.
Is That Always An Advantage?

“As animals, that’s so much of our strategy. If it’s cold, we go indoors. If we attack something or we flee from it, so much of how we deal with the world is through movement. But plants stay there and take it. For the tree outside, if it gets cold or gets hot, it never goes indoors. It doesn’t run away from all the things trying to eat it.” Geobiologist Hope Jahren knows we’ve got a few things to learn from plants.

She wonders: “How do we grow in ways that we don’t if we put all that energy into running around? What do you learn from life, and how do you interact with the world if you stay?”

Staying. With The Trouble.

“Trouble,” according to Philosopher Donna Haraway, “is an interesting word. It derives from a thirteenth-century French verb meaning ‘to stir up,’ ‘to make cloudy,’ ‘to disturb.’” It may seem illogical to say that if we stay, we’ll stir things up. But plants do turn dirt and shit into sugar, after all.

What if we stayed instead of moved? With the trouble, with a friend (or an enemy), with oneself…?

Becoming Plant is a seven-hour endurance performance transfigured into a time-based, conceptual sound-video presentation. The complete video presents a performance in real time, from 1-8 pm on September 16, 2009, at Pt. Reyes National Park, in which the artist was planted in the earth. While it may appear to be the case, the video is not time-lapsed; the play of light has to do with nothing other than the movement of sun and wind, completely on their own time, coming in contact with earthly existence. The video's soundscape consists of field recordings taken by the artist as well as real-time recordings of the artist's labor in creating this piece, all of which have been further composed and montaged. What happens when one fits oneself into the earth in the ardent attempt to turn sylvan?